1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to musical apparatus, and, more particularly, relates to the combination of a wind instrument and an electronic music synthesizer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Due in part to the relatively high cost of providing an orchestra or group of performing musicians, the music synthesizer has become an important music instrument. For example, it is known that music accompanying a television program is quite often generated by a musician playing a music synthesizer to obviate the expense of a complete orchestra. Many synthesizers are adapted for keyboard operation, requiring the musician be trained as a keyboard musician. This is a limiting feature since the expertise of many musicians is limited to other non-keyboard musical instruments. Such musicians would be unable to skillfully utilize a keyboard synthesizer without additional training.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a means to allow the musician to control the synthesizer in a manner which utilizes the musician's existing expertise in playing a musical instrument, and which does not require extensive retraining in keyboard instruments. One of the inventors of the present invention has addressed this need with respect to musical instruments having substantially a one-to-one relationship between each key and an associated note. U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,244 discloses a music apparatus which allows a musician to control the output of a music synthesizer while playing his own music instrument, e.g. a saxaphone, in a normal manner. This music apparatus does not solve the problem associated with music instruments such as the trumpet wherein there is not a substantially one-to-one relationship between the setting of the instrument keys or valves and the associated note. With such instruments the range of the note produced can also be varied by the musician varying his lip configuration on the instrument mouthpiece. Thus, with a given valve selection, the musician may produce not only the primary note but may produce one or more overtones of the primary note by varying his lip configuration.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,938,419, issued to De Rosa, discloses an attempt to resolve this problem. De Rosa discloses a switch arrangement which detects the positions of the trumpet valves and an operator controlled switch which together define the particular note being produced by the instrument. An important drawback to the De Rosa instrument is that it does not allow the musician to control the synthesizer by playing the trumpet in a normal manner. Instead, the musician must not only manipulate the keys while blowing into the instrument, but must also manipulate a note selection switch which is foreign to the trumpet. This additional switch not only increases the difficulty of operating the instrument, but also requires very rapid manipulation of the selection switch when the musician transitions from one note range to another.
It is accordingly one object of the present invention to provide an interface apparatus which allows a musician of an instrument such as a trumpet, tuba, French horn, trombone or the like, to control the operation of a synthesizer by playing the instrument in a normal manner.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel music apparatus comprising the combination of a wind instrument operated by the selection of means determining the air column length and the applied wind pressure, an electronic music synthesizer and an interface circuit, whereby the musician controls the operation of the synthesizer by playing the wind instrument in a normal manner.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an improved interface apparatus which not only senses the valve positions of the instrument but also the pitch and loudness of the note being played by the musician.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an interface apparatus utilizing improved means of sensing the valve positions.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a novel trumpet-to-synthesizer interface apparatus which comprises musician control means allowing the musician to produce vibrato effects or pitch variations in the synthesized sounds.
These and other objects and advantages are achieved by the present invention as will be apparent from the following description of the invention.